Bye-bye Massive Datacenters.

[rayheinrich]

Just wanted to add this (It's from a post I did to a tech freak board):

Bye-bye massive datacenters.

There’s a big push toward halting the construction of the mega‑datacenters
and it's being forced on the big companies -- OpenAI, Anthropic, Meta,
Microsoft, Tesla, etc. -- by public outcry and legislation. The corporations are
responding by moving to distributed micro‑data centers the size of cargo
shipping containers. Walmart has about 4,600 stores in the US, which
makes it an obvious candidate for distributed micro‑data centers.
Big‑box retail already has the heavy electrical load, cooling, fiber, security,
and zoning baked in, so putting micro data centers in the back of these
stores is far faster and cheaper than building new massive datacenters
from scratch. And once you add the other chains: Target, Costco,
Home Depot, Lowe’s, large grocery store chains, even Dollar General (19,000)
etc. etc. you end up with a lots of existing infrastructure that could host
tens of thousands of micro data centers without waiting years for permits
or new construction.
(As an example, Tesla just announced their Megapod, which is basically a
micro data center in a box; a pre-wired, pre-cooled compute module they
can drop at the back of their existing Supercharger sites. Since Tesla
already has about 3,000 Supercharger stations in the US and roughly
8,500 worldwide, they can deploy Megapods quickly using infrastructure
that is already permitted, powered, cooled, and connected.

And also note: AI "inference" (what the industry calls actually running
the AI programs after they've been trained) is rapidly becoming more
efficient through smaller AI models, specialized chips, and more efficient
algorithms. So those giant growling megastructures will give way to
humming shoeboxes hidden behind places that already exist.

So yes, the Apocalypse is being implemented faster, cheaper,
and more discreetly than we ever could have expected.

P.S. But don't mistake my positive attitude for anything but glee in
watching a massive train wreck. Multinational corporations and
large countries do not have our best interests at heart.
The divide between rich and poor will become greater.
And the social disruption from AI is almost insignificant
compared to the societal destruction that global warming is causing.
That is the REAL big deal.

[busker]

Data centre power consumption is just about a rounding error
You want to combat global warming? That’ll need the electrification of thermochemical processes. Cases in point: ammonia and iron.
A modest sized integrated green steel plant will consume over 2GW of power at a steady clip. For a data centre, that’s an enormous size.

And China produces over a billion tonnes of steel.

To the point about AI inference: it is possible that we never get there.
The universe we live in is actually a giant computation engine, said the mice of Douglas Adams.

To calculate everything in the universe, which we must do, requires an engine bigger than the universe.

That’s why we need more data centres

And Musk and Trump and Bezos have done more for humanity than a million Jesuses

[RiverNotch]

Yeah, cutting USAID and bombing schoolchildren has done so much for humanity

[dukealien]

I tripped over "pre-cooled."  Presumably this means they come with pre-installed heat exchangers all over the box... the laws of thermodynamics are not, you know, breakable.

And data center water usage was also a rounding error compared with farming and industry, even in the scary models.  By "usage," returning it to the atmosphere where it can rain down again unless it's being taken up from groundwater.

I worry more about people (humans) implementing their vague ideas of what intelligence is, in hardware and software - then reacting to the product as if they've got it right.

[CRNDLSM]

In comparing data centers to agriculture, one gives food

[RiverNotch]

And industry gives the things that make food, houses, clothing, or else that move food, houses, and clothing from what make them to those that use them. Without steel, we wouldn't have harvesters, rebar, weaving mills....

What are data centers supposed to be doing again? Are shipping containers made of Grok? xD

[busker]

What are data centres supposed to be be doing?
The whole world runs on AWS. Including steel plants and shipping. And agriculture.

Of course, we could do without it. But we could also do without steel rebar and build with giant limestone blocks.